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Presents the latest advances in cementochronology and its use in various anthropological contexts, from ancient fossils to forensic cases.
List of contents
Part 1. The Biology of Cementum; Introduction: Cementochronology in chronobiology; 1. A brief history of cemental annuli research, with emphasis upon Anthropological applications; 2. Development and structure of cementum; 3. Insights into Cementogenesis from human disease and genetically engineered mouse models; 4. A comparative genetic analysis of acellular cementum; 5. Pattern of human cementum deposition with a special emphasis on hypercementosis; 6. Recent advances on acellular cementum increments composition using synchrotron x-radiation; 7. Incremental elemental distribution in chimpanzee cellular cementum: insights from synchrotron x-ray fluorescence and implications for life history inferences; 8. Identifying life-history events in dental cementum, a literature review; Part II. Protocols; 9. Cementochronology for archaeologists. Experiments and testing for an optimized thin section preparation protocol; 10. Optimizing preparation protocols and microscopy for Cementochronology; 11. Cementochronology protocol for selecting a region of interest in zooarchaeology; 12. Tooth cementum annulations method for determining age-at-death using modern deciduous human teeth: challenges and lessons learned; 13. The analysis of tooth cementum for the histological determination of age and season at death on teeth of us active duty military members; 14. Preliminary protocol to identify parturitions lines in acellular cementum; 15. Toward the non-destructive imaging of cementum annulations using synchrotron x-ray microtomography; 16. Non-invasive 3d methods for the study of dental cementum; Part III. Applications; 17. Using Cementochronology to discuss the organization of past Neanderthal societies; 18. Investigating seasonal competition between hominins and cave hyaenas in the belgian ardennes during the late pleistocene: insights from cementum analyses; 19. Cementochronology to the rescue: osteobiography of a middle woodland woman with a combined skeletal dysplasia; 20. Estimating a mortality profile of fisher-gatherers in Brazil using Cementochronology; 21. Cementochronology: a solution to reconstructing past populations' mortality profiles using individual age-at-death estimates; 22. Assessing age-related mortality at petra, jordan using Cementochronology and hazard modeling; 23. Shaping age at death distributions by applying tooth cementum analysis to the early medieval graveyard of lauchheim (Germany); 24. Back to the root: the coming of age of Cementochronology; Index.
About the author
Stephan Naji is a bioarchaeologist specializing in paleodemography, particularly in demographic and health transitions. His current research focuses on optimizing cementochronology within the broader evolutionary context of chronobiology for histological and virtual age-at-death estimation. He also actively promotes life-history events identification and modeling in cementum through interdisciplinary collaborations.William Rendu is a zooarchaeologist interested in the mobility of past human societies. He implemented cementochronology during his Ph.D. to discuss the seasonal distribution of Neanderthal activities. He is now continuing this work with a larger chronological framework as director of the International Research Laboratory ZooSCAn in Siberia.Lionel Gourichon is a zooarchaeologist. His research interest lies in the emergence of food production in Southwest Asia and the Mediterranean area, in particular on human-animal relationships and the process of domestication. He actively contributes to methodological advances in bioarchaeology to improve the study of mammal and bird remains.
Summary
Our history and interaction with the environment are recorded in our teeth in the annual growth layers of cementum, a unique tissue anchoring teeth in bone. This book presents the latest advances in this method and explains how to use it in various anthropological contexts, from ancient fossils to forensic cases.
